Month: September 2015

Adrian Grenier is an actor. He was most recently in the series Entourage. It was a shallow, made for cable series that showed the lives of actors in Hollywood and well…their entourage. I would guess that none of the story lines were deep nor challenging. From what I gather, this is probably what most people expect from Adrian. However, on September 11th he posted something deep, fascinating, and controversial. It went exactly like this, “RIP to the 2,996 Americans who died in 9/11. RIP to the 1,455,590 innocent Iraqis who died during the U.S. invasion for something they didn’t do.” Needless to say this didn’t end well. He received death threats, was completely bashed in the press, on his Twitter and Facebook accounts, along with people asking for his show to be boycotted. He was harassed to the point of finally taking the post down.

As civilians, we can argue until we’re blue in the face about who was actually responsible for the U.S. terrorist attacks. I would bet that none of us will ever really know. Truth be told, that isn’t what this post is about. Regardless of why Adrian posted what he did, he touched on a very important truth. War is ugly and innocent people die. Many of us try to share a convenient (albeit incorrect) belief that in war there is always a clear cut “bad guy” and that only the bad guy suffers. However, if you reflect back on most wars, the bad guys are rarely punished as severely as the innocent citizens that occupy the region of war. War is nothing but collateral damage and it takes its toll on many generations to come. Once the first bullet flies, you cannot close Pandora’s Box.

Adrian certainly did not word his post in the most tactful way but the message was on point. Totally innocent people have been and are still being slaughtered in Iraq in the name of retribution. Millions of innocent children, women, and men have been murdered in the name of war, just as the 2,996 Americans were on 9/11. No one life is more valuable than another.

So my question is this? Was Adrian bashed because people honestly thought he was disrespecting the 9/11 victims or were people so outraged because it is true and we have no where to put such indignation?